pci cards

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by bora, Dec 9, 2001.

  1. bora

    bora

    Hi !

    I want to use 2 pci cards and an agp card for 3 monitors, PCI cards are a lot cheaper then the dual-agp cards. But i only found PCI cards with 4 or 8mb memory, is this enough for trading? My AGP card has 32mb and works very good.

    Thanks,

    Bora
     
    #1     Dec 9, 2001
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  2. vikana

    vikana

    simply do the calculation: width * height * bytes-per-pixel.

    E.g 1024 by 768 at 15 bits (hi color) requires 1.5 MB of graphics memory.

    Details: 1024*768*2/1024 = 1,536 kilo bytes ~= 1.5 MBytes

    PCI do have some performance limitations with raw graphics performance when compared to AGP. I doubt that would affect any trading application.
     
    #2     Dec 9, 2001
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  3. Nicodemus

    Nicodemus

    Best Buy had ATI 16mb dual monitor cards on sale for $49 today. I used a couple of ATI single 8mb cards for quite awhile with no problems.
     
    #3     Dec 9, 2001
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  4. Magna

    Magna Administrator

    I was at CompUSA yesterday and they commonly sell two ATI PCI cards: the Expert 98 (8mb) for $39, and the Expert 128 (16mb) for $49.
     
    #4     Dec 9, 2001
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  5. Magna

    Magna Administrator

    Nicodemus,

    I used a couple of ATI single 8mb cards for quite awhile with no problems.

    Curious, what sort of internet connection did you have (56K, DSL, cable-modem, etc.), what charting software were you using (realtime, end of day), and how many charts (especially if realtime) did you have on the screen(s) at one time? Thanks.
     
    #5     Dec 9, 2001
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  6. Nicodemus

    Nicodemus

    I started with 56k for everything. I had two phone lines. Used Realtic at that time. At one time I had four monitors on one of the computers, I agp and 3 pci. I was limited on how much data I could put on the screens. If I overdid it things would slow down but that was because of my connection not the video card. I now get my data via satelllite and I'm still using one of those 8 mb cards and I can put as much as I want on the screen without any problem. Hope that answers your question.:)
     
    #6     Dec 9, 2001
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  7. version77

    version77

    Which satellite service are you using and how much $$ for it?
    And does it ever go on the blink?

    Thanks...
     
    #7     Dec 9, 2001
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  8. Nicodemus

    Nicodemus

    version 77

    I'm using starband. It runs $70 a month. Its only been down once since I've had it due to weather for an hour or so. As discussed on other threads its only good for data download, not execution. If you have no other broadband options its probably your best bet, for data at least.
     
    #8     Dec 10, 2001
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  9. GATrader

    GATrader

    I have 2 monitors running very well in Win 2000 Pro using the appian dual card. I needed a third monitor so I bought a PNY technologies single video card (PCI). When I rebooted, the system used the just installed card as the primary monitor. According to Microsoft, I should go to control panel->display-> settings to reconfigue mult monitor settings.After right clicking on the desktop to start configuring my 3 monitor display, a message flashed FOR 1 second-looks a lot like hexadecimals and then the screen went blank.

    Any help tips. Thanks
     
    #9     Dec 10, 2001
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  10. bora

    bora

    yes, when you use an AGP-card and a PCI-card, the PCI will be your first card, AGP-card has more memory. So is there a way to switch this, so that the AGP becomes the first card? Maybe WindowsXP has a solution....?
     
    #10     Dec 10, 2001
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